Jackie Presser

FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT JACKIE PRESSER - PAGE 5

First Eastern Europe. Then Russia. Now the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. If the coming of democracy in the first two of those venues was historic, its triumph in the last is scarcely less remarkable. For fully four decades, "the Teamsters" has been a virtual synonym for corruption, mob domination and disenfranchisement of the rank and file in American labor. Last week, however, may have marked the beginning of the end of Teamster mobocracy and its replacement with true democracy.

It's back to the future for the Teamsters union. The more things change with the Teamsters, the more they stay the same. It's deja vu all over again for the Teamsters. Take your pick of cliches, they all come to the same thing: The name "Teamsters," which long ago became synonymous in American life with corruption, remains so--even after almost a decade of government-supervised reform of the union. Ron Carey, who was supposed to cleanse the union's Augean stables, turns out to have created a mess of his own. Carey, federal monitor Kenneth Conboy ruled Monday, was part and parcel of a plan that improperly diverted more than $700,000 in union funds into his campaign for re-election as Teamsters president last year.

A tentative merger between the International Typographical Union, the nation's oldest union, and the Graphic Communications International Union has been rejected, it was confirmed Thursday. By a 25-15 vote, the executive board of the graphic communications union Wednesday spurned a plan devised by top leaders of the two unions. The move raises the likelihood that the Teamsters Union, which had a disputed merger deal of its own with the typographical union, will again vigorously pursue an alliance.

Attorneys for the uncle of Teamsters President Jackie Presser said Thursday that they plan to file a multimillion-dollar civil lawsuit against the Justice Department for wrongfully prosecuting their client. Presser's uncle, Allen Friedman, spent 11 months in prison after being convicted of embezzling Teamsters union funds. He was released in August after department lawyers acknowledged the government had failed to turn over vital evidence to defense lawyers. "We will certainly file some type of civil lawsuit very soon against the government," said Jack Levin, one of the attorneys.

Former Teamsters President Roy Williams has ended his testimony before a U.S. District Court jury without mentioning the existence of a heretofore unknown union slush fund from which he borrowed freely. In three days of testimony, Williams implicated himself in payoffs totaling $117,000 for giving his approval for $87 million in Teamsters pension fund loans for the Stardust casino, and detailed other mob ties with Teamsters funds and operations. But he was not forced to testify that he often borrowed money from the secret union slush fund and never repaid it. Documents show he disclosed the existence of the fund to the FBI in a statement before he began testifying last week.

Teamsters President Jackie Presser and a codefendant had permission from the FBI to conduct a payroll-padding scheme at the union's Local 507, a move that has led to criminal charges against them, defense attorneys alleged in court documents. The documents, filed in U.S. District Court on Monday, represent the first time that Presser, the local's secretary-treasurer and union's international president, along with Anthony Hughes, the recording secretary, have admitted through their attorneys that they were FBI informants and had the bureau's permission to operate the scheme that lasted 10 years.

Chicago's top Teamsters official has been removed as leader of the Central Conference of Teamsters, the union's traditional base of power, as a result of ongoing tumult within the hierarchy of the 1.6-million member union. Daniel Ligurotis was ousted as director of the conference, which includes 500,000 members in 13 states, by the union's national executive board during its quarterly meeting, which concluded Thursday in Montreal. The board acted at the behest of Teamsters President William McCarthy.

A Chicago Teamster leader has been named as new head of the union's Central Conference, its traditional base of power, union officials confirmed Wednesday. Daniel Ligurotis, top official of Local 705, was appointed by recently selected Teamster President William McCarthy and the union's executive board to replace Detroit Teamster Bobby Holmes as director of the 13-state region, which represents 600,000 unionists. In addition, as an internal purge continued, a bitterly divided board also backed McCarthy's wish to remove Edward Lawson as leader of the union's Canadian Conference.

Former trustees of a Teamster Union employee benefit fund, including current union President Jackie Presser, did not violate federal law in approving a $10.6 million claims-processing deal in 1975 between a firm run by the late Allen Dorfman and the Chicago-based fund, a federal judge has ruled. Senior District Court Judge Hubert Will has dealt an embarrassing blow to the U.S. Labor Department in a case it brought in 1978 and which, he believes, has wasted taxpayer money. "We consider this to be the most unnecessary decision and opinion we have issued in more than 24 years on the federal bench," Will concluded in a 63-page opinion issued Monday.

A former inspector general of the Labor Department, citing what he called a longtime rivalry between federal law-enforcement agencies, accused the FBI on Friday of seeking to undermine the department's investigation of Teamsters President Jackie Presser. Testifying before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Robert Magee said the FBI action was aimed at blocking any indictment of Presser on charges of carrying "ghost" employees on his union payroll. Magee, who has since retired from the Labor Department, said: "These events, when presented to me and considered by me in their entirety, left me no conclusion other than the FBI intentionally, seriously attempted to disrupt the Labor Department's investigation to prevent the indictment of Jackie Presser."